Hightower Lowdown:

Let's defend our public treasures: 'America's best idea' is under attack

In his 2012 presidential escapade, Mitt Romney cast himself as just a regular fella, but his inner son-of-privilege kept coming out, exposing him as completely out of touch with regular Janes and Joes. Meeting with Nevada newspaper editors in February 2012, for example, Romney confided his concern for a problem of rising importance: America's national parks.

Saving our ravaged planet… and ourselves

Earth Day cometh – the 43rd year of this national focus on our globe. Should we weep… or cheer?

Both.

The first step toward any recovery is admitting that we have a problem. In fact, beaucoup of them. For example, despite the squawking of profiteering polluters and professional deniers, our very atmosphere – without which everyone and everything is dead – is rapidly being degraded by our addiction to fossil fuels, literally altering Earth's climate in disastrous ways. Yet, as we burn, our policymakers fiddle.

Let us fiddle with the tar sands in Alberta, Canada, they demand, uncaring about the vast amounts of ozone-destroying carbon that will be released by ripping open the boreal forest to get at the junk oil, or about the extra carbon-dioxide contamination that will come from processing this especially-toxic sludge. Also, let us fiddle with the Earth itself by fracking deep underground shale to bring gas, oil – and ozone-depleting methane – to the surface. Oh, and let us keep fiddling with the priceless ecology of America's ancient Appalachian Mountains by exploding-off the mountaintops, merely to make it cheaper for Big Coal to extract more ozone-killing ore.

There are plenty of horrors to make you weep on this Earth Day. But tears don't bring change. That comes only from the determined effort of ordinary grassroots people to organize, strategize, and mobilize. The good news for our Earth and our own existence is that such people are on the move in every part of America. They're confronting the greedheads and boneheads, creating effective energy alternatives, forging fresh and sensible policies, lifting heads out of the sand – and producing the change we must have.

That's what Earth Day is about. Don't weep – cheer the progress we've made, and join the movement for more.

"Pipeline Spills Stir New Criticism of Keystone Plan," The New York Times, April 3, 2013.